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In this episode of HVAC Full Blast, Carter, Mary and Stephen Ross are joined by Craig Johnson, Director of Contractor Experience at Trane Technologies, to break down the Trade Warriors program — a veteran‑focused HVAC training and placement initiative designed to help address the skilled labor shortage.
Trade Warriors helps transitioning military service members move into HVAC careers through an intensive eight‑week training program that combines hands‑on technical learning with industry certifications — and connects graduates with dealers nationwide.
If you’re a dealer, leader, or manager trying to build a stronger bench of technicians (while supporting those who have served), this episode offers a clear, real‑world look at how Trade Warriors works — and how dealers can participate.
Interested in becoming a Trane dealer? Visit us at partners.trane.com to learn more about how you can partner with a leader in HVAC innovation. Explore opportunities to elevate your business and stay ahead in the market with Trane!
Creators and Guests
Host
Mary Carter
Mary Carter is a seasoned sales and marketing leader with over six years at Trane Technologies, currently serving as Regional Sales Manager. With a strong foundation in RHVAC, consumer finance, and strategic account management, Mary brings valuable insights and real-world experience to every conversation.
Host
Guest
Craig Johnson
Craig Johnson leads Trane Technologies’ Contractor Experience and Innovation team. Drawing on over ten years of sales and leadership experience in Residential HVAC across multiple channels, he brings a customer centric approach to driving strategic initiatives and partnerships that help enable accelerated dealer growth.
Producer
Editor
Kerianne O'Donnell
Kerianne O'Donnell is the Digital Learning Manager at Trane Technologies and serves as the editor of the HVAC Full Blast podcast. With a background in graphic design and a strong passion for developing digital learning experiences, Kerianne brings her creative expertise to the podcast, delivering engaging and impactful content to listeners.
What is HVAC Full Blast?
HVAC Full Blast is your bi-weekly dose of HVAC business growth, powered by Trane. Hosted by Mary Carter (Trane Technologies) and Stephen Ross (Sandler), this podcast is built for residential HVAC dealers who want to scale their business, sharpen their sales, and lead with confidence.
Tune in for expert interviews, dealer success stories, and practical tips on pricing, service agreements, workforce development, and more. Whether you're in the field or in the office, HVAC Full Blast helps you stay ahead in a competitive market.
Interested in becoming a Trane Dealer? Visit our website at https://partners.trane.com/
We'd love your feedback and suggestions on future episodes. Please email us at hvac_full_blast@tranetechnologies.com.
This podcast channel is for general informational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed in these episodes are those of the panelists and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Trane Technologies. Trane Technologies makes no warranty or guarantee concerning accuracy or completeness of the content presented in this webinar.
Trane does not provide tax, legal, or accounting advice. This material is for informational purposes only and it should not be relied on for tax, legal, or accounting advice. Tax law is subject to continual change. All decisions are your responsibility and you should consult your own tax, legal, and accounting advisors. Trane disclaims any responsibility for actions taken on the material presented.
All trademarks referenced are the trademarks of their respective owners. ©2025 Trane. All Rights Reserved.
Today, Mary Carter and Stephen Ross are joined by Craig Johnson, director of contractor experience at Trane Technologies. They spotlight Trade Warriors, a veteran focused path into HVAC combines hands on training, certifications, and real job placement to help dealers hire with confidence. If you're trying to grow your team, improve retention, or build a stronger bench of future leaders, they'll walk away with clear next steps and a fresh perspective on talent. Let's get started.
Welcome back to another exciting episode of HVAC Full Blast. I'm Mary Carter.
I'm Stephen Ross.
And we are gonna go into a kind of a unique topic for at least my company here. I know that we kinda tackle this from different angles here, but we have a guest with us, which is so fun. So, Stephen, why don't you queue up our guest? I feel like I always steal that opportunity.
Yeah. So Craig Johnson and, official title now, something fancy like director of contractor experience. Right? Okay.
I had to write all that down. So, but but here's this little story for you, Mary. Back when Craig was a little baby TM, he was my TM. So, like, that's we got to know each other.
And that's Craig, is that almost a decade ago at this point?
Yeah. Yeah. So I've been here eleven years and, it so it's actually been over a decade ago that that I was calling on the business you were at at the time. So it's it's a it it goes it goes a ways back at this point.
So here we are.
So Craig is the he's the rock star salesperson that introduced you to our brand.
There you go. Actually, that's that's pretty true. Yeah.
Yeah. We were I was selling another brand not to be mentioned here, and and Craig started chipping away at that. And, you know, a few years later, just whole wholesale changed it out, went all in. So there you go.
Well, and we're we're gonna deep dive into a couple of different things today, but maybe just a note on that, Craig, because we have a lot of people that listen to us that are in sales roles. And I think that that chipping away piece is where people really can get discouraged and maybe give up or, you know, it just feels so hard. And then that's when we become order takers instead of strategists. And, like, do you have anything to speak on that experience? Like, was how and maybe specifically how you prospected with Stephen?
Yeah. It was interesting. It a pretty sizable dealer that he was a sales director for at the time. And and I think if if memory serves, which is testing in and of itself here, a lot of it came down to A, Stephen was willing to have the conversation and was willing to kind of hear the other side of it.
Like he said, were selling another brand but they had multiple salespeople. And so I think as I recall, the opening was really around, Hey, I'll give you an opportunity in front of my sales team. And if there's a fit here, like I'm not gonna prevent them from selling it. And so really I think it started with however many there were. I think there was four or five at the time. It started with a couple of them that had been there a long time and had sold some train in the in years past. And so there was a little bit of built in trust there, I think from a brand equity perspective.
As best as I can recall, the strategy at the time was to find a spot in their retail price book, to, in terms of their offering to kind of have the ability to get the permission, so to speak, to to find a location in that price book where we could I thought we filled a pretty good niche for them and and allowed us to be a competitive, but b, have a competitive advantage versus the other brand they were selling in that particular kind of efficiency level. And honestly, I think it just started out there and that allowed us to build a little bit of trust together, to build a little bit of kind of frequency of communication.
To use Stephen's word, it was a chipping effect. Had started with one of their sales reps and then two, and then I don't know that I'm gonna say we ever got all of them because I don't think we did, but we got at least got at least half that were offering it pretty consistently. And that's, that was really what I think led to the growth between our two businesses, at least while I was in my role and he was in his. So it was it was good.
Yeah. You know, the here's the challenge, I think, from my side of the table is let's say you're buying a million and a half dollars of equipment from brand x. And then the train territory manager walks in and you go, alright, let's look at your pricing. I mean, the the challenge is one is, you know, a quality brand is gonna be slightly more expensive than say a generic product. Right? So you got a little bit of difference there, but then just from a volume standpoint, if I'm buying nothing from you, I get no volume pricing. I'm getting a lot of volume pricing from the other brand.
So that is a little bit of a challenge is that you gotta commit on the dealer side. I think you gotta at least commit some buying power to get some volume to get the ball rolling.
It's always interesting like what kind of, what does that conversation look like? We're a little off topic, but that I mean, it's how do you know if if you're buying a million and a half dollars from BrandX, how do you know that they're taking good care of you? How do you know that you're getting good pricing and good quality products? How do you know that you're getting the support that you want on the marketing side and tech support and all that kind of stuff if you really have nothing to compare it to?
So I think that was kind of Craig's sales pitch is we gotta carve out a little bit just to keep the other guys honest and then compare like, now you got something to compare. And if you go, well, yeah, this is actually better. Well, then you start to see more dollars flow to that side. So thought that was a good sales pitch.
I was on the receiving end of it. So obviously I thought it was a good sales pitch because we started buying. There you go.
Know. This was pre Sandler days. Like I didn't know anything about Sandler at the time. That was just going off the hip, But yeah, it was it worked out well. Think that was that was well said. It it created an opportunity for us to kinda wedge a piece of the business and put some proof in the pudding, which, you know, led to led to better things.
Well, Craig's work is our reward because now we have you, Stephen, and we're so lucky.
Greg and I got matching tattoos actually to say train. It's phenomenal.
I mean, we've I love it.
I've never bonded with anybody like that before.
Yeah. Had to get American Standard on the other side, both brands. But I will. Yep. For sure.
I will. This is great. Maybe one day we'll have an Instagram and we can post those up there and, you know, create show notes and be a real real show.
My tattoo my tattoo just says t r and half of an a, Then Craig says the A and E. If we stand next to each other, it says train.
How it is. It is pretty adorable. Have to say. It is.
This is really special. Well, that's all the time we have today. I'm kidding.
This was great. Was great. Kidding.
This was not a bromance episode, but we are going to dive into what Craig has a little bit under his belt now that he's in our contractor experience side of the house. So Craig obviously works his way up here and having worked alongside contractors probably brings a great lens to this role. And one of those things that we talk about often, and it's a little bit of a unique position as a manufacturer is how can we help our contractors with finding talented talent or qualified talent, right? And again, a little bit of a unique position for us, right?
Yeah. For for sure. I I think I and to that end, like, I I don't know that I had a full appreciation for it in all those years in sales. I certainly heard it all the time from contractors that, you know, I think everybody that's in sales today would would echo that sentiment that even in a challenging market that labor's a consistent problem, right?
Meaning of especially on the technician side. And so I don't know that until I bounced over to this role eight, nine months ago what it's been now, I don't know that I had a full appreciation for everything that goes into the program that we're gonna talk about today in terms of like just how much work and and kind of advantage goes into that on the contractor side but it was it was eye opening. So, you know, I think that's that that's what we're gonna dive into, but it it it's definitely undersold. I'll say it in the field today, I believe.
Nice.
So let's dig in. I mean, just give us like the top down. I mean, this is a program that you mentioned has been going for about five years now. So the the concept's been proven.
I mean, back kinda during the pandemic, it was like, hey. Let's try this and see if it works. Well, now it works. Like, we know it works.
So we've got we've had some graduating classes and those have gone well, but give us kind of the overview of just how's the program work.
Yeah, so again, if we didn't already say it, name of the program is Trade Warriors. And so essentially the way it works is when you have someone that's coming out of the service, be army, could be military or marines rather we recruit some of the marines as well now. We partner with a company by the name of Right Tech. And so as those veterans are coming out, they have opportunity to enter our training program which we brand as trade warriors.
And so we are partnered up with two separate bases that we do that at today. So one is in North Carolina in Fayetteville, which is Fort Bragg and the other one formerly Fort Hood, now Fort Cavassos in Texas and so it does not require that the veteran is, you know, lives in that area today. They can go through those areas and then relocate when they're done but it's effectively an eight week program and the gist of it is it is kind of a it starts with some classroom instruction but then very quickly delves into hands on. So they've got training American Standard equipment in there.
They've got competitive brand equipment to be able to diagnose and essentially we're teaching them to do or I should say Rite Tech is teaching them to do is in that eight week time span, they walk away with NAAT certification and a number of other kind of hours towards even a license depending on the state.
And the goal really is that by the time they leave, that we can pair them up with one of our dealer customers and that they might be maybe one to max two months of ride alongs away with a senior tech from being able to be in their own truck and contribute. As a service tech, potentially an installer starting out, whatever makes sense, whatever the business need is, but really taking all the intangibles that come out of what you probably would already imagine a veteran's going to have, high integrity, high problem solving ability to adapt, all of those kind of cool under pressure intangibles that are really tough to teach and then harnessing that and giving them all the tactical pieces that they really need to be a fairly quick value add for our dealers.
And then once, of course, once they get out, one of the, parts that Beth and my team really leads the initiative around is helping with in concert with the RITECH recruiters, helping to get them placed with our dealers. I mean, that's the end goal, right? That we take this gap of lack of skilled labor in the trades and HVAC specifically, to facilitate a path for some of those folks to fill some of that gap and then literally facilitate that meeting with our dealers for them to have a chance to interview them and have the opportunity to hire them.
So walk walk me through if if the way I understand the military is that whatever base you kind of go in when when you're joining, whatever base you go in at, that's the base that you come out of. So you could be from Iowa, but if when you enlist, you go to Fort Bragg for boot camp and and your training, then when you retire or get out of the military a few years later, you're coming out of Fort Bragg but. Yeah. That technician may still wanna move back home to Iowa, right? So, this could be, I mean, even though we've got two bases in two different states but it's really, it is a national program because the graduates really could end up wanting to live anywhere. Is that correct?
Yeah, a hundred percent. So you hit on something that's I think probably important and like one of the things that we're really trying to do in this kind of, even though it's been around for five years, this re commercialization effort is to make sure that all of our contractors and customers are aware of this program no matter where they're based out of. Because to your point, whether they came through Fort Cavassos or Fort Bragg for this program, we have veterans that are looking for one reason or another, whether it's family or whatever the case may be that are looking to move all over the country.
I mean, coast to coast, right? So there may be a concentration that's a little heavier in North Carolina for Fort Bragg or a little heavier in Texas for Cavassos. But like by and large, I mean, even in a short amount of time, I've been in the role. I've I've seen the recruiting calls where it's everything from California to New Hampshire and everything in between and so, as a result of that, it's a good, it's a double edged sword.
It's it's great in the sense that it allows us to be impactful in those veterans lives and also to be a value add to our dealers across the board but it's also a challenge because we need to know from those dealers that they have an interest in interviewing them, right? So, there's the step one is getting the dealers like not not just our awareness of them but literally kinda getting their name in the hat that yes, we wanna be made aware when a dealer graduates and is in our area. That's the That's the gap that I see candidly, like when I first kind of came in here, we've added, I think one hundred dealers in the last year.
And again, this program has been around for five years. So we're very much in that stage right now of needing to further bolster those ranks because we never want to be in a scenario where we're at the end of that eight week training period and we're coming up on graduation and we don't have a home for one of these veterans.
That just shouldn't be a thing in our own I love the intention behind this program because it really solves two needs.
Dealers are looking for skilled talent that can hit the ground running and be self sufficient and maybe a lesser known need or one that maybe we're a little exposed to is veterans who are exiting the military service are looking for a landing pad and preferably one that maybe provide some good income and a good quality of life. And maybe they're transitioning from a career that was a little more volatile and like this is gonna be something that still gets them hands on, but not necessarily at the base every day. I don't think that I can't speak from experience on the transition from military to civilian life. I'm pretty much a civilian through and through, but that's gotta be a little bit daunting. And I never really thought of that as the other kind of benefit to the program.
Yeah, a hundred percent. Probably the coolest thing I've seen honestly since I started in this role is this is the second graduation that I just went to at Fort Bragg last week and probably the coolest thing I've seen is it's not just the veterans that are graduating. Whether there's kids there, there's wives, there's spouses, there's family members that are all part of this deal and you can tell for a lot of these men and women veterans, it is it is a it is a family tree changing event, right? That that they're undergoing and so to see that part of it is awesome and I think to your point, having a eight week program to get them not just the skills but really the confidence, right? To transition into a new career and be competent and confident going into an interview, I think we see that.
I think when you take the back to the intangibles argument, when you take a lot of the stuff that those folks come out of the service with, that is really hard to replicate. We start seeing now that the program has been around for five years, we go back a few cohorts and there's folks that are in leadership roles. There's folks that own their own businesses now. There's folks that work for our commercial business and our parts business and some of our distributors and so it's not just even at the contractor level.
The potential kind of different paths they can take career wise is super exciting and it's something we like to talk about when we go see them during the cohorts. And, you know, I think that's an area where we also have another opportunity to grow, but no doubt. I mean, it's, it's a very, it's a good glide path to get into a heck of a good career. And I think a lot of them that are coming into the program start to see that pretty early on.
Yeah. So if five years in the program, that's pretty exciting. How often are we graduating veterans coming out of this program?
So there's a total of five cohorts per base per year. If you look at it that way, it's a total of ten cohorts. We've had a total that have come through, I think just over three hundred at this point. And we've got like the only we typically there's a fee for a dealer when they hiring fee when they hire them and so we track. We don't ever invoice that until at least ninety days in just to make sure it's been a fit for everybody and there's that kind of trial period. And I think we're pretty close to eighty percent of folks that are still at that same employer ninety plus days in before we do that process. So that's one of the I guess that's a couple of things we've measured today which I think there's opportunity for us to build out some additional metrics there as we work to further commercialize this.
That's not the scope of it.
I feel like that sounds like a very good success rate. You tracking that as a positive?
I I think so. I mean, I think Yeah. I'm sure it depends on who you ask, but I think if you were to talk to, you know, any if you took a subset of dealers and ask them like, hey, the average, you know, call it entry level tech that they bring on or installer, whatever you wanna whatever bucket you wanna look at, like, what's that rate of how long they're there for ninety days? I I feel like anecdotally when I talk to dealers, it's it's quite a bit lower than that. But I don't know that I have the data to bear it out, but it it feels it feels like a fairly good rate. And, I would say anecdotally, again, course, soldiers tend to have, veterans tend to have a higher loyalty degree than your average civilian, I would say.
Well, we did an episode on hiring practices and it was extremely popular. And I think that this topic comes up a lot because there is that relief feeling of, oh, okay, we got a job offer out there, they accepted, but then there's fit and then ethics and how things go. And what if, especially with a service member, What if the move isn't a good fit for the family, right? Like there's that kind of different aspect to it as well. And Stephen, I imagine you probably have some pretty good stories about just hiring and that relief feeling, but then also that like, we're not home through yet.
Yeah. And so maybe I've got a question. So we could look at the program from like the recruit side, How you get in the recruits? What kind of person? What skill set do they have before they even get into the program?
My understanding is a lot of the guys have a pretty high mechanical aptitude even if it wasn't necessarily in the heating and air world. So to some extent, they know how to use tools. It's just now we gotta teach them heating you know, the heating and air nuance. And then also, I would like, I'd love to know from the dealer side, like, are there lessons learned that, you know, you've heard from dealers where they say, you know, here's something that's worked really well in terms of onboarding somebody from the military and keeping them engaged. And so, Craig, tell us a little bit, I mean, just I don't know if we can maybe break it in half and say, tell us from the recruit side, what kind of people are you recruiting into the program? How do they find out about it? If I had somebody that was getting out of the military, how would I even let them know where to look to join a program like that?
Yeah. Great question. And as it relates to the recruiting effort, like that's a key to this whole deal. It doesn't go without without the recruiters.
And so those are on the right tech team. So in addition to like the classroom instruction and the technical side of things, they have their own recruiters. And they've actually just got a a new one at Fort Bragg who who seems to be he was a former army recruiter, and then had time in the service himself. But to to your point, so there's an active recruiting effort on base.
So as these guys are coming out, there's all kinds of different avenues under which, you know, these recruiters would interact with them whether it's at a given event or just at a, you know, a job like Paul kind of some of these bases had have areas where they can go to to explore job opportunities and they they'll set up shop there. They started doing the same down at the there's a marine base in Jacksonville. So, you're starting to see some marines that have come through the program. Now that they've got some recruiters down there as well.
In terms of like qualifying criteria, you know, it'd probably be, I can hazard a guess based on my conversations with Right Tech. They may have other stuff they would add to this but I think fundamentally, it's it's a few things like some of it is just the, well, duh, like, you know, it's it's a high integrity. It's certainly what sort of feedback they may have gotten from their superiors coming out of the service. Some of it is aptitude like the actual technical piece of it. If, you know, for example would be is if you've got a cohort that is mostly full or full based on where we have dealers to later place them and one has, you know, maybe it was a mechanic or a welder or whatever the case may be and the other had no technical experience. You know, there's probably a waiting factor for something like that.
Having said that though, I I will say that the one piece I'm I'm pretty darn confident on in in all of the conversations I've had with our training partner is they definitely value the intangibles over the tangibles, right? I mean, like if if if it's somebody who's got great communication skills and that's readily evident, great leadership skills, has advanced through the army and and kinda demonstrated, you know, their ability to to lead and certainly their ability to, stay out of trouble as well. I mean, just basing facts there, doing all the right things and they just don't have the technical piece, you know, worst case scenario, maybe that means they shadow a senior tech when they get out for an extra month or something.
But at the end of the day, they're still gonna walk away with a very good foundational understanding of the technical aspect of this. I think our trainers feel confident, like, they can get somebody even that has minimal technical background up to speed pretty quick if they have the right work ethic and everything else that comes along with it.
Last piece I'll say here though is, and again, back to the challenge around dealer coverage, like one limiting factor we have today on the recruiting side is if they have, and this happens unfortunately a little bit more frequently than I would like right now. You have somebody that fits the recruiting profile but where they want to go, we do not have dealer coverage. We're generally not going to take that person in because we don't have confidence that we're going to be able to place them on the other side.
Gotcha.
So that's a tough spot and one I'd like to rectify sooner than later, hence the initiative to kind of bolster our dealer coverage.
And the dealers that have been successful with onboarding some of these candidates post program, has there been any talk from them about good lessons learned?
Yeah, said again, anecdotally, interestingly enough, was a dealer that was at this graduation that's hired, think this was, they were one of the veterans that was graduating in Fort Bragg this last time this dealer that joined as a guest at the graduation was hiring one of them based in the Raleigh area and I think this was the sixth one that they've hired and so you tend to see that. I'll I'll say that much. There's a number of dealers and a number of businesses that have hired multiples where it's not just a one off. So I think those ones are ones that we kind of seek out to learn more.
I would say that probably the single most significant takeaway I've heard in terms of things that they've learned is to provide a path, Like meaning to give them a career path because a lot of these folks are looking to you know to develop, right? They they want to get into the profession by way of whether that's install or service tech or whatever but the idea is that they they want to continue to develop and so, I think the one consistent message that I've heard from dealers that have hired multiple is being clear on the front end with, hey, this is where you start, this is what our and clear about expectations too.
They're coming from a highly structured environment. So I think as much as a dealer can mimic that type of structure and unambiguous expectation setting and also show them the roadmap to get where they wanna go, I would say that's where you see the most consistent success with retention.
I've had I have a couple friends that are ex military. One, he came out of Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina and decided to be a barber because he felt like it was a skill he could learn and then also own his own business. And so now, gosh, five years later, he owns a barbershop, has five or six other barbers working for him and he's actually got a certification where he can train other barbers now. So, he's basically doing the same thing, hiring guys And then I had a friend in Colorado that owned a security company and, and so if you were a a big rock star and you were coming into Denver, you had your own security team, but you needed a local security team to help you get from the airport to the hotel and the hotel to the concert venue.
And, you know, it's interesting to talk to those guys about what they've done completely different industries, but we're hiring from the same talent pool. And my business partner, Tim, at my heating air company, Tim was a a marine pilot. And, and so I think that helped a lot. And, you know, it's interesting when you say provide a clear path.
The the guy in Colorado, they actually had, they they used military titles in the sense that they would say, okay. When you come in, you're an e one, like enlisted one. Right? And and so and you're gonna make I'm just making up numbers, twenty bucks an hour.
So to get to twenty two bucks an hour, which is an e two, here's what you have to do. You have to get your NATE certification or you have to have six months of experience or something like that. All the way up to say e five might be a sergeant. Alright?
So that means you're in charge of other people. So if you wanna be management material, like you could be a lead installer or a lead technician at that point, even if you're not directly managing people. You know, you've got a leadership role in there, but to get to that level, now you're making thirty five bucks an hour, but here's what's expected of you. And so those guys, I think, had a very good the way they explained it to me is that's what guys coming out of the military are looking for.
Clear expectations as to how do I advance, what do I need to do to get there, and and that is a little bit of a difference.
Our industry is very broad. We have lots of different types of business owners and whatnot. Some who maybe had military experience, some who have none. And similar to Mary, had none. I had asthma.
I had an ROTC scholarship that got revoked because they were like, sorry, we don't need you anymore. So like that got cut short. But now I'm like, oh, kind of creating that career path seems to be the key to retention. Like, who's a dealer?
I mean, if you say, hey. We got a dealer that's hired six of these guys. I mean, that's what like, you knew the program's working at that point. Right?
If they're like, hey. Can we have another one? So what are those guys doing that makes it stick? Is it really just the retention?
I I think that's a big piece of it. I mean, there's a there's a business that that is actually is a customer of our commercial group that has I think they've hired something north of fifteen or sixteen of these folks. They have a regional reach, right? So they're a multi location like a a duct cleaning type of operation along with some I think they do some load calc work or whatever it may be but in any event, like, they have a very structured like intake path. They have a very structured mentorship path which I think is another piece I didn't mention that is that is super helpful in this way to have somebody to kind of walk alongside even once they're out on their own generating their own revenue for the business like having something that somebody they can lean on inside that business I think is huge.
I'm not gonna say it's perfect, right? I mean, at the end of the day, they're all still humans and and have we ever heard of somebody leaving for a dollar more an hour? Like, sure. I mean, that that stuff happens but I would I would argue it happens at a disproportionately lower rate than what we see from your kind of typical civilian entry level tech for sure.
And and to that end, I think the in the interest of like controlling the controllables, I I if you were to survey the top five or six contractors or businesses that have hired these folks, I think you're going to see those continuous those those themes, right? Of mentorship, a path, clear expectations, non, you know, when it comes to feedback at the leadership level, not being ambiguous in in what that looks like. You know, I think that generally is what tends to bolster the path and certainly the ones we see go on the leadership levels. That's a consistent theme.
Yeah. I'm lucky that I live in Northern Virginia and I'm just a hop, skip and a jump away from Washington DC. My community here is filled with service people And it's true. They do have quite a structure, I would say to their work that at times it makes me envious. And then other times I'm like, wow, that is really rigid.
It's an absolute blueprint for clear expectations, really set path. And even family members of mine who were on the federal pay scale, they know exactly what they need to do to get to that next rung. And sometimes that clarity can be really reassuring, especially if you're coming into a new field and exiting one where you have that structure, that's what feels good and familiar. And I think adapting a practice to that is a good idea. The other thing that I see with just successful dealers all across the country is that feeling of those structures in place or those events or those recognition pieces. The military is remarkable at recognition.
That's not something I think that they really highlight as a point of pride, but they do a phenomenal job with recognition. And when I see dealers do that on their own, they're creating culture. That's what that is. It's not a buzzword.
It's a thing that happens as a result of clear expectations, recognition, and supporting one another. And good dealers have great culture. I mean, it's just a fact and you can see it. And then like really good dealers have social media and talk about that culture and look like real people on the internet that you wanna hire and bring it to your home.
So that's my plug for that, which is also to say, you know, anyone using this program, talk about it. That's a really big deal that this is an initiative that you're supporting.
Yeah. It is. And it's funny you say that because it's that's part of, like, our own initiative too, right, of of, like, us as trained technologies doing an even better job of commercializing it and leveraging our own media and marketing channels and things like that to make sure we're doing certainly more of it than what's happening I think a couple of years ago but it's an opportunity for us to just to again, to socialize that and to make sure that we're creating the connectivity between our brand and that program. We did a, actually just did an interview not long ago with HR in the news, as they're gonna kind of run a bit of a spot on it as well.
So excited for that and for it to get some additional exposure because it's, I guess in my mind, it solves a problem, but it's also very like meaningful work. I think that's where the having those two things intersect and seeing that, like seeing that graduation, seeing the growth and development that those folks have and that these are real lives and they go on to have real impact. I think that's the cool role that we kind of get to have visibility to with this program.
Yeah. And a really unique program for us. I don't know that in our residential businesses we've really ever done like a train to competency kind of program before. So that's a very, very interesting kind of deep dive that we did as a company to pursue this.
It is and I obviously can't take credit for developing and that would go to my predecessor but I will say that they've had to work through, it hasn't been without its challenges like we're with a different training group now than what the program started out with. And I'll say that, you know, certainly they they absolutely feel like the right partner now. They've got one of the gentlemen that's that's kind of the the one of the partners within that group. He was a former dealer himself that that sold his dealership and you know, lives in that area.
One of them was an is is I should say an engineer by education and has lots of experience in in inspections and code enforcement and and all those things and then they've got guys that are former techs that are doing like kind of the the, you know, classroom based teaching. So, it's it's it's not theoretical. It's it's very much folks that have been there that can speak to what it looks like on the other side and the feedback that we've gotten from them by and large has been has been really good. So, we feel like we've got a a good team from recruitment all the way through the the training aspect of it and and the folks that are there to help them, you know, on some of the business coaching too.
So on this podcast, we've found that we have a lot of fun words that start with f.
And you mentioned one of them earlier, and it was fee. But there's a little bit of a fee structure to the program. So sometimes that word is financing, and sometimes it's fee, and, you know, sometimes it's something else. So what talk to us about the fee structure. How does that work with the program?
Yeah. Good good question. So, a couple things because we're kind of in in a period of potential change here a little bit but for the longest time, the fee structure has been the same and so there's a there's a hiring fee that the dealer pays. I mentioned, I think the ninety day period that we wait to make sure that there's a opportunity for for fit there but it's so essentially what the dealer pays in today's world is an eight thousand dollars hiring fee and and then the world of train technologies that is co opable.
So, for dealers that don't know what I mean when I say that, it just means they can claim back fifty percent of that cost if they have co op funds available to do so. So, we we certainly wanna make sure we make that process as easy as we can. I'll be very transparent and say like this is not a profit center for our business. Like it's not intended as such and it's not built as such.
This is absolutely geared towards, you know, the the gap that we've identified in the marketplace and frankly, having a having an opportunity for lack of a better word to put folks out into the into the industry that are very much frankly trained in American Standard biased. Like that's part of what we want to do. So they get a chance to have their hands on our equipment and and we hope that they, you know, go on to to be influencers in their own in in their own offices and employment areas. So, that's what the fee structure looks like today.
The part that's in flux is the GI bill and so as essentially right now, the soldiers don't have a mechanism to pay to go through themselves and we do not want to preclude them from doing it. So the only way that we keep the program essentially neutral is to be able to have a dealer fee on the outside when they get hired in order for us to be able to facilitate and pay the trainers and the leases and everything that goes along with the program.
The GI bill is a has been a fairly long process to try to get approval for. The good news is we have just gotten approval at our Fort Bragg, North Carolina location like literally just in the last couple of months. You have to get federal approval and then you have to get state approval. And so in the case of North Carolina, we got delayed when we had that government shutdown and that, you know, kind of postponed some of that but we're there now and so starting with this next cohort, I think the expectation is we'll have probably a mixed bag of some soldiers that come in under the GI Bill and some that'll be, you know, traditional that don't have that yet.
Fort Cabosos in Texas, we are we have obviously already had the federal approval. We're pending the Texas state approval. Generally speaking, Texas tends to be pretty military friendly. So, we're we're not anticipating any hiccups there.
So, the hope there, I would say, would be that by the third cohort this year, what does that will hopefully be in that same spot there. What does that mean? Fee structure wise? I don't have the exact number yet.
Like we have to run the financials again based on this kind of idea that we're gonna have mixed classes out of the gate. Meaning some that are GI, some that are not. I'll say it this way though. I think that as we as we come to the outcome of that, I think the fee structure for the dealer will go down significantly enough to where to where a dealer especially after co oping it, it's it's going to be much less significant than it is now to the point that I it I don't think it's going to be a barrier whatsoever to a dealer that's in a place and and has a desire to consider somebody from that area.
So, I anticipate that kind of hurdle that we've had of the hiring fee to be much less so. Hopefully, by the time we're by Q three at the latest.
Yeah, Stephen, what's your take on the current fee? Like, eight thousand bucks, high, low to hire somebody?
Yeah. Think it all depends on who you ask. It's it's so funny because again, like, I coming in from from the sales world, I kinda just would hear a dealer say, yeah, that's high and and just take it at face value. Right?
I mean, I'd be like, okay. I I guess it's high and I think remembering, a, that it's back to the co opable piece. So, like, if a dealer's got co op sitting there that they haven't already used, like, it's really four thousand net. Right?
And so assuming they're on a fifty fifty comp agreement. So I will say having been involved now and, like, seeing what they actually walk out with, seeing how they're trained, like to me, if I'm an employer tomorrow, A Grant is nothing for for one of these folks. Right? I understand the I understand when you look at it through the lens of potential risk of, well, what if they walk away, you know, a few months in and I understand that that concern, but we've we've talked about all the reasons why that's of less likelihood than than it would be with a non veteran.
So it's you're asking a question that I have an inherent bias in Mary, I guess, is what I would say. Like, I don't view it as as as objectionable at all, but at the same time, we also, you know, wanna take away any barrier we can because again, the intent of this program is not to generate profit.
I think I mean, it you know, if I put on my dealer hat again, I mean, I you know, we were offering sign on bonuses anyway. And so a lot of times that sign on bonus, you're gonna get half of it ninety days and then half of it at the six month mark or something like that. And that sign on bonus was usually a couple thousand dollars.
And then if you hire a recruiter, a recruiter's typically gonna charge somewhere around ten percent of what that employee, that role would make in their first year.
So, a good technician might make sixty, seventy, eighty thousand in the first year and a recruiter's taking ten percent of that and that's not co opable. So, I think it's comparable.
And I think the other, I mean, it's this is my partner and I would debate employee salaries and hourly and I'm on the sales side of things. And so I'm like, man, I don't care what we gotta pay. Like, just get some horses. I mean, we can't win a race.
We don't have the horses. Go get the horses. Like, my job is just to keep raising prices until we can pay for the horses you get, but you gotta go get the horses. So I think what we found basically was it's a little bit of an arms race in any local market.
Pay is gonna go up just the way same way inflation goes up for materials, which is the same as just groceries get more expensive. I mean, it just it's the way the world works. And so you can either be the the heating and air company that's lagging behind and paying as little as possible, and then you're the kind of technicians you get are c players or d players. Or you could say, you know what?
We're gonna lead the pack, and we might be a little bit more expensive, but dang it. We're gonna have some a players on our team.
And so I think at the end of Tim and I started out not making much money. I mean, our our EBITDA, our net profit was low single digits, and so we were pinching pennies.
And really what that ended up being was kind of self fulfilling. And so at some point you go, yeah, all let's just pay people. And so, but then our net profit doubled. I mean, that's the irony of it is you go, okay, well, now we're actually profitable because we have good people. I mean, that's you but you gotta get the good people. So.
Well, the the one interesting tidbit that I thought of why you were why you were saying that, Stephen is like, if we were talking about the the contractors, the businesses that have hired numerous of these, I don't hear any objection around price from them. The ones that have hired multiples, not once did they ever come back to us saying, hey, I've done so many, can I get it this for less expensive? That doesn't happen which is where you'd expect it to happen if if the fee were that objectionable. So, think some of this comes down to like expectation on the dealer side like what what you know, kind of structure they have involved and I I think if they're just looking for, you know, a a random tech to come be a headcount in their business and they don't have any real intentionality around what that path is gonna be for that person, then yeah, again, not to say that that's always the case but I would envision that business probably having less of an appetite for a hiring fee than somebody who's like, hey, know what we're getting here because we've done it a bunch, just like very reasonable.
But all that to be said, GI Bill helps us bottom line. That's the takeaway here. So I think it certainly is reasonable today. I think it only gets significantly more reasonable before year end.
That's great. That's a great move in a really positive direction for a program that is doing really, really awesome work. So amazing to hear about that.
It's Yeah, we're happy about it. So I'm looking forward to the getting through the rest of the GI Bill conversations, but yeah, we're excited for it and certainly excited for what it can even become going forward.
We we were this is completely off topic, but we had a selling technician class in Florida last week. And we were talking about homeowners who say, hey. I'm gonna get three or four bids. And one of the things that we would say is, hey.
Almost all of our customers get three or four bids. Like, that's completely normal. Would you like us to tell you what other customers have found? Our pricing's pretty competitive.
We're a little bit higher. Why do you think they chose us? Having getting having gotten multiple bids, you know, and we were a little higher, why do you think they came back and chose us? And just engaging in that conversation.
And one of the little caveats is I'll sometimes say to a homeowner, hey. There is one group of customer who doesn't get three bids. Any idea who those people are? And people will go, no.
And we go, well, people who've used us before. They usually don't bother to go back through the process. They just call us. So that and that that to me, that's the problem.
That's the that's the testimonial of having dealers say, hey, we've hired five or six of these guys and we want more. I mean, obviously, there's an ROI on it because if there was no ROI, they would give up and go, well, that didn't really work.
Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. And interestingly enough too, as it relates to I keep saying guys, but I should be should be clear here and say we've had women, a lot of them recently relative to years past that have come through in the last couple of years and that's been cool to see too, just because I know it's, I mean, all know that especially the technician role has probably been, you know, male dominated at HVAC for a long time, but we're definitely seeing an uptick in women graduates that have come through and generally speaking, tend to be home run hitters when they get out of there. I think that's an exciting kind of theme to see play out in the industry too.
Oh, definitely. My own tunnel vision for my own personal ideas of what I thought a career would be never had the letters HVAC in it. And I'm so glad that I found it for myself, but I can't even imagine, you know, the opportunities out there for, someone really willing to work into one of these businesses every single day.
Tell all of my friends now and all of my friends with adult kids now, there's this really cool industry you should check out.
Yeah, don't get into coding, get into HVAC.
Yeah, we got enough of those.
Here's a question, Craig.
When the program first came out, which again, twenty twenty one, I think, and we signed up. We were like, oh, yeah, as a dealer. We're like, absolutely. We we wanna be in.
And then that first cohort came out, then they were like, well, nobody wants to move to Columbia, South Carolina. We're like, well, now we're bummed. You know? Like, we were all excited about it.
Yeah.
But but now fast forward a few years and it's not just one cohort a year. You're running ten cohorts a year.
What does it take and what does it look like to ten x this program? Like, what do we I mean, do we just need a couple hundred dealers to sign up and say, we'll take the guys? Is it is it, well, we gotta build out the infrastructure to 10x it? Is it well, we need more bases to come on board to 10x it?
Like, what's your I mean, just crystal ball three years from now, now instead of ten cohorts a year, we got a hundred cohorts a year. We're putting out a thousand technicians a year into the train in American Standard Dealer Base. Like, how do we get there? Like, what's that take?
It's probably a lot at least a little, probably a lot of everything you just said. But to to be more clear, like, in today's world, we we take in, generally speaking, with few exceptions, like early in the year, cohorts tend to just naturally be smaller. But generally speaking, as I alluded to before, we have more applicants than we do allow into the cohort for a number of reasons. And sometimes it is simply the geography piece, right? So first part, yes, dealer coverage, the single biggest gap that we have, even having added a hundred, right? That's the single biggest gap that we have.
Above and beyond that, the GI Bill fundamentally will allow us to intake more into each cohort. In today's world, we probably average somewhere in the range of ten to fourteen per cohort per base, right? There's absolutely no reason essentially what we've modeled out here based on our conversations with RITECH and some assumptions with the GI Bill, we've modeled out like closer to twenty to twenty five. So essentially doubling each cohort like out of the gates just with the basis we have relationships with today, right?
So that would be, I would say a very, I don't wanna call it low hanging fruit, but certainly a very realistic incremental step forward to to scaling it. If we do that though, here again, what I what I don't wanna do as a trained technologies employee and former sales guy is go push, create a scenario where we're sending well trained folks and well disciplined folks off to be bet off to help better our competitors. I don't wanna do that, right? And that's what's gonna happen if we can't place them with one of our dealers.
So, it's a little bit of chicken in the egg in in terms of that conversation. The last piece of it that's probably much more in the outer skirts of that crystal ball is, yes, we would have to have more relationships with bases and we would also have to substantially in partnership with our partner, like grow their footprint, right? Like because they have a set number of trainers today, a set number of recruiters that can facilitate those relationships at basis. So you'd have to replicate that effort across other bases in order to scale things.
Is that doable? Like one hundred percent. The talent's out there to do that, but we got to get to a place where we can and the financials have to again make sense towards it's a net neutral concept to be able to do so at least over the long term. So probably a wordier answer than you were looking for, but it all starts with more dealers and and the GI Bill gets us to a place where we can put more in each one.
So that's the that's the first step.
Well, I mean, I think what you learn in an economics one zero one class is if there's demand, a free capital society will figure out how to apply apply bring out the supply. Right? So what you're saying is in order to ten x this thing, we gotta increase the demand. If the demand's there, then the supply catches up.
And so what we really need is we just need dealers to sign up. So if I'm a dealer, I'm like, wow, dollars eight thousand sounds risky, but one, I can co op it. Two, the cost is likely to come down by the time a technician actually comes to me. And then three, I got ninety days to make sure the employee sticks before you actually send me a bill.
So we just need dealers to go, okay, if that sounds pretty good, if you're like, yeah, I wanna either, I wanna hear more about it or, hey, that's great. I wanna sign up. Craig, what's the next step? Like, where do we go?
Yeah. They would just go to our we have a website that's set up on trade and and I'm I'm going off memory. I believe it's trade dash warriors dot com. I can I can clarify that for you but they can just fill out the form there and get added and to be clear, there's no there is no fee for a dealer to opt in to saying we want to know?
That that's it. So, there's apps, it's absolutely free for a dealer to just put their name in the hat and say, I just want to be made aware when somebody's trying to relocate to my rate. They'll always have the opportunity to say, hey, no, we don't have a spot right now or the fees too rich or or whatever the case may be. They'll have that opportunity at the time but there's zero obligation in them signing up.
So, when I say we're trying to bolster our coverage, I'm referring to that. Like, tell us that you want, raise your hand and tell us you wanna know that we can have the broader conversation. If there's something we need to do to to work together to you know make it make sense for a dealer we've done that before too.
Well here at HVAC full blast we fact check and trade warriors dot com is indeed correct.
So There you go.
There you go.
You get accurate information out of us. That's great. Craig, anything else you would want the people to know about what we're going on with Trade Warriors? This is pretty exciting in my opinion. I know it's been around for a little bit, but we're gaining some steam and it again, it's a proven concept. So it's, you know, it's time to kinda get it going again.
Yeah. I I don't know. I think we've covered it all pretty well. The only, you know, probably ask that I have is is kind of the broader audience as it relates to our, you know, whether it's a IWD partner of ours or a DSO or whatever. If if you guys have groups of dealers that wanna learn more, like, grab time with me or Beth or our team and give us that chance to to just go answer questions on a a smaller audience or whatever works best for them but yeah, I think our main goal here is just to make sure that we've that we're driving some additional awareness. This thing's been around for a while, but we're due for a bit of a relaunch and I think the timing with the GI Bill makes sense for us to do that now. So appreciate you guys being willing to have us on here and spread the spread the good word a bit.
Well, I'm glad you guys got to connect as well. You know? Always.
Always. Always good to rekindle the bromance when I can too. Of course.
Yeah. I love that. Well, if you're interested in learning more about trade warriors, I definitely encourage you to check out trade dash warriors dot com. It is plural, so just note that. And, if you're interested in grabbing time with Craig or Beth or learning more about the program, please email us at HVAC underscore full underscore blast at train technologies dot com. And if you need to hear that again, as I always say, please hit rewind.
That is that's our show for the day. Craig, thank you so much. Nice. And Yeah. We'll see you soon.
Absolutely. Thank you, guys.
And our listeners can go back next time to hear when Mary's getting her train tattoo because Craig and I already have them.
Oh, man. Tattoos oh, that's a slippery slope in the in in my parents' world. I don't know if I'm allowed, and I'm an adult.
We'll see you soon. Thanks for listening. Bye.
Bye. Bye.